In general I’m concerned with the way the community is headed—I joined for the philosophy, I’m less interested in reading about analytic people’s approaches to basic social interaction. Some days I feel like this site has gone from Less Wrong to Wrong Planet.
So I guess I’m downvoting as a political stance, rather than anything to do with the quality of your writing. Sorry, I’m afraid that’s not helpful.
I’d be concerned if the community failed to explore these sort of topics.
Mere “philosophy” would be kind of empty. Once the idea of instrumental rationality was held up, the idea that rationalists should win, then it’s either start trying to apply it to real problems, or concede that we didn’t really mean it and that we just want to talk about stuff that makes us sound intelligent and sophisticated. That “applied rationality” features prominently here adds enormously to the credibility of LW and especially of the authors who have something to say about it, at least in my eyes.
Perhaps the problem is whether this generates the perception of “self-help” as opposed to “becoming awesome”. The former kinda smacks of low status and might turn some people off, while impressive success is obviously not a problem. Perhaps it’s a presentation issue (I suck at PR so I can’t judge), or perhaps we just haven’t amassed a sufficient wealth of evidence of awesomeness to overcome the negative connotations.
I second this position. Despite the fact that I will probably benefit from these self-help kinds of posts, I’m nonetheless more interested in posts about creating new rationality skills and dissolving philosophical dilemmas.
Also, affixing the word “rational” to everything is mildly grating.
I would also prefer more quality philosophy like the original sequences, but I prefer quality posts about relationships to low-quality posts about philosophy that present rambling thoughts or stuff that’s already been covered to death.
In general I’m concerned with the way the community is headed—I joined for the philosophy, I’m less interested in reading about analytic people’s approaches to basic social interaction. Some days I feel like this site has gone from Less Wrong to Wrong Planet.
I joined for the same reason, but since I maintain a Stoic stance I’m actually very comfortable with my philosophy impinging on my practical considerations. Philosophy need not be impractical (although I agree that some things, like “rational gift buying for persons 8 or under”, are too disconnected from the philosophy espoused here that it would be best we didn’t encourage those kinds of posts).
My impression is that sometimes there are more epistemic or otherwise technical articles, and sometimes there are more instrumental rationality articles. I don’t have a feeling for whether it’s mostly random variation, or if articles of one sort tends to inspire more of the same until people run out of ideas and/or get sick of it.
In general I’m concerned with the way the community is headed—I joined for the philosophy, I’m less interested in reading about analytic people’s approaches to basic social interaction. Some days I feel like this site has gone from Less Wrong to Wrong Planet.
So I guess I’m downvoting as a political stance, rather than anything to do with the quality of your writing. Sorry, I’m afraid that’s not helpful.
I’d be concerned if the community failed to explore these sort of topics.
Mere “philosophy” would be kind of empty. Once the idea of instrumental rationality was held up, the idea that rationalists should win, then it’s either start trying to apply it to real problems, or concede that we didn’t really mean it and that we just want to talk about stuff that makes us sound intelligent and sophisticated. That “applied rationality” features prominently here adds enormously to the credibility of LW and especially of the authors who have something to say about it, at least in my eyes.
Perhaps the problem is whether this generates the perception of “self-help” as opposed to “becoming awesome”. The former kinda smacks of low status and might turn some people off, while impressive success is obviously not a problem. Perhaps it’s a presentation issue (I suck at PR so I can’t judge), or perhaps we just haven’t amassed a sufficient wealth of evidence of awesomeness to overcome the negative connotations.
I second this position. Despite the fact that I will probably benefit from these self-help kinds of posts, I’m nonetheless more interested in posts about creating new rationality skills and dissolving philosophical dilemmas.
Also, affixing the word “rational” to everything is mildly grating.
Seconded.
Rationally seconded?
Thanks for explaining, Nominull and Tetronian!
I would also prefer more quality philosophy like the original sequences, but I prefer quality posts about relationships to low-quality posts about philosophy that present rambling thoughts or stuff that’s already been covered to death.
I joined for the same reason, but since I maintain a Stoic stance I’m actually very comfortable with my philosophy impinging on my practical considerations. Philosophy need not be impractical (although I agree that some things, like “rational gift buying for persons 8 or under”, are too disconnected from the philosophy espoused here that it would be best we didn’t encourage those kinds of posts).
My impression is that sometimes there are more epistemic or otherwise technical articles, and sometimes there are more instrumental rationality articles. I don’t have a feeling for whether it’s mostly random variation, or if articles of one sort tends to inspire more of the same until people run out of ideas and/or get sick of it.